By: Adreyo Sen

Her madness was an open sore.
A forgotten wound.
It added years to a face
closing in upon itself,
like a government deposition.

Her madness fled from her lined mouth
and attacked us passers by,
a snake constructed from words
long incoherent
and thus
bereft of poison.

Unhurt,
we failed to pity her,
this madwoman, abandoned,
roaming in abandon
the mad abandon of wilderness
once the front
to my uncle’s chambers.